lunedì 16 novembre 2015

In these hours the web is full of comparisons between 11/13 Paris attacks and what happened in NY on 9/11. Just like fourteen years ago, the mainstream opinion is that we are at war and not safe anymore in our own western countries, freed from violence, battles and massacres decades ago.

It is hard to say if we are at war - WWIII many say - or under attack. But are we at peace?

In the last years we have had an increasing toll of jihadist attacks but just steal a glance at this list published on Wikipedia and you'll realize that Islamist terrorist attacks existed even before Bataclan and the IS (or Daesh), and years before Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden. Remember the 1998 US embassy bombing in Nairobi, where 214 people were killed, or the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, where 6 people were killed and more than 1000 were injured. Not to mention the 1979 Iran hostage crisis when 52 American diplomats and citizens were held hostage for 444 days during the Khomeini Iranian Revolution. Revolution which was supported by Jimmy Carter US to overthrow Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi dynasty. Not a surprise, if you look at recent history with Saddam's Iraq, Gheddafi's Libya and (unsuccessfully) with al-Assad's Syria.

Unfortunately, US and European politics in the area during the last 2/3 decades did not make things easier, creating monsters all around the Middle East and Africa Muslim countries, while worsening the stability of the region and the clash of civilization issue. As a consequence, the toll of terrorist attacks in the Western world evidently increased after 9/11:

US. October 23, 2014 – Zale H. Thomson, also known as Zaim Farouq Abdul-Malik, attacked four New York policemen in the subway with a hatchet, severely injuring one in the back of the head and injuring another policeman in the arm before being shot to death by the remaining officers, who also shot a civilian.

AUSTRALIA. December 15–16, 2014 – 2014 Sydney hostage crisis. A lone gunman, Man Haron Monis, held hostage ten customers and eight employees of a Lindt chocolate café at Martin Place in Sydney. Police treated the event as a terrorist attack at the time. It was however designated as a terrorist attack by the state government but Monis' motives have subsequently been debated. 3 dead 4 injured.

FRANCE. August 21, 2015 – 2015 Thalys train attack Shooting and stabbing in train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris injures 5. The incident is believed by French police to be an Islamist terrorist attack.

GERMANY. September 17, 2015 – An Islamist of Iraqi descent attacked and injured a police officer with a knife in Berlin. 1 injured, 1 dead (perpetrator).

AUSTRALIA. October 2, 2015 – 2015 Parramatta shooting. A NSW Police Force civilian employee was shot dead outside NSW Police Force headquarters on Charles Street, Parramatta, Sydney by a 15-year old lone gunman. The gunman then engaged with NSW Police Special Constables in a shootout before being killed, 2 dead.

On top of the above mentioned, many other jihadist attacks failed in Europe in the last two decades. Many terrorists were arrested from our police forces, being prevented from perpetrating more massacres among our civilians.

The aim of this post is proving that though there isn't any formal declaration of war, there is a strategy to bring urban guerrilla in our cities in the name of a terror religion led by the new barbarians.

All along these years we tried to normally carry on our lives in both New York City or Paris, thinking that all this was isolated incidents. But if we don't deal with it, what we may experience in the near future is an "israelization" of our western territories where - every now and then - our biggest cities become the perfect scenario for a one night (or day) confused street war. Just like it happens in Israel every now and then since 50 years.

mercoledì 24 settembre 2014

Though the world is now looking at the General Assembly in NY for the climate change issue, it is no secret that the United Nations has been losing power in the last decades.

Though there was no legal basis for the attack on Afghanistan in 2001, it has been 2003 war in Iraq which really had a negative impact on the image and credibility of the United Nations. Since then, right after Kofi Annan finished his mandate in 2006, the United Nations has disappeared from the international scene, especially in conflict issues management (like conflict prevention, peacekeeping and peacebuilding). Furthermore, financial problems and continuos funding gap, together with the lack of an outstanding Secretary General, turn out to be the coup de grace on the Wilsonian world order built after WWII was over.

Now, as ISIS is gaining ground in Syria, and Al-Qaeda is back on the scene, the hesitating world community is putting together a coalition of countries whose mission and objectives are not so clear. A coalition formally led from Obama's United States and France, without any UN blessing at all.

At least, in 2001 (Afghanistan) and 2003 (Iraq) the UN was somehow called to have a prominent role on both issues. Even if the Charter's principles were not respected.
On top of that, while at that time the Security Council monopoly on the use of force -whose only exception is given by Art.51 of the UN Charter- was clearly violated, at this time an international legal basis to attack ISIS existed. Nevertheless, countries keep playing their own military strategies careless of international treaties and agreements which, now yes, would allow them to defend Iraq and Syria (UN Member States), and also the whole region, from an international security threat.

This can only mean one thing for our beloved international organization: that once again, the UN is failing to prove itself as the keystone of world order.

Heading to a multipolar world, as suggested by many international relations theories, probably means going in the direction of a world without any specific country leadership (neither the US nor China). We know Obama is a supporter of a new multipolar world order, and his foreign policy proves it; but if things keep working just like this, with a weakened United Nations and America on the edge of a new wave of isolationism in international politics, what we will have, more than a multipolar world, will be a jungle.